Myocarditis update from Sweden
BY ANISH KOKA The COVID19/vaccine myocarditis debate continues in large part because our public health institutions are grossly mischaracterizing the risks and benefits of vaccines to young people. A snapshot of what the establishment says as it relates to the particular area of concern: college vaccine mandates: Dr. Arthur Reingold, an epidemiology professor at UC-Berkeley, notes that UC also requires immunizations for measles and chickenpox, and people still are dying from COVID at rates that exceed those for influenza. As of Feb. 1, there were more than 400 COVID deaths a day across the U.S. “The arg...
Source: The Health Care Blog - February 27, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Ryan Bose-Roy Tags: Medical Practice Anish Koka covid19 myocarditis Sweden Source Type: blogs

Fight Aging! Newsletter, February 13th 2023
This study investigated whether taller Polish adults live longer than their shorter counterparts. Data on declared height were available from 848,860 individuals who died in the years 2004-2008 in Poland. To allow for the cohort effect, the Z-values were generated. Separately for both sexes, Pearson's r coefficients of correlation were calculated. Subsequently, one way ANOVA was performed. The correlation between adult height and longevity was negative and statistically significant in both men and women. After eliminating the effects of secular trends in height, the correlation was very weak (r = -0.0044 in men and ...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 12, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs

Viral Infection in Middle Age Correlates with Later Dementia Risk
A range of evidence suggests that persistent viral infection contributes to the risk of suffering neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's disease. This may be due to mechanisms relating to amyloid-β accumulation, in its role as an anti-microbial peptide, a part of the innate immune system. It may have more to do with lasting chronic inflammation subsequent to infection. Researchers here note another addition to the epidemiological data on this topic, in this case linking severe infections requiring hospitalization with later dementia risk. The effect sizes here are large and last for a long time following infecti...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 10, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs

Fight Aging! Newsletter, August 8th 2022
In conclusion, aging research will benefit from a better definition of how specific regulators map onto age-dependent change, considered on a phenotype-by-phenotype basis. Resolving some of these key questions will shed more light on how tractable (or intractable) the biology of aging is. Does Acarbose Extend Life in Short Lived Species via Gut Microbiome Changes? https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2022/08/does-acarbose-extend-life-in-short-lived-species-via-gut-microbiome-changes/ Acarbose is one of a few diabetes medications shown to modestly slow aging in short-lived species. Researchers here take a...
Source: Fight Aging! - August 7, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs

Continuing the Debate Over Viral Contributions to Alzheimer's Disease
Persistent viral infection may be an important contributing cause of Alzheimer's disease, either because the amyloid-β associated with Alzheimer's disease is a part of the innate immune response, and infection thereby increases production, or because persistent infection drives the chronic inflammation that disrupts the biochemistry of brain tissue. If viral infection does drive Alzheimer's disease, it may go some way towards explaining why the disease doesn't correlate with lifestyle factors such as weight, activity, and so forth, anywhere near as well as is the case for other common age-related conditions. It all sounds...
Source: Fight Aging! - August 5, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs

Matthew ’s health care tidbits: The Stupidity Vaccine
Each week I’ve been adding a brief tidbits section to the THCB Reader, our weekly newsletter that summarizes the best of THCB that week (Sign up here!). Then I had the brainwave to add them to the blog. They’re short and usually not too sweet! –Matthew Holt For my health care tidbits this week, I think we need a new vaccine. We need one that prevents stupidity.Look I get that some people don’t think the flu vaccine is effective and don’t think the effects are too bad, so they don’t get one every year. Many people don’t get a vaccine for shingles. But as someone who had shingles long before the recommended ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 5, 2022 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Policy Matthew Holt vaccines Source Type: blogs

The Death Cult
While there has always been an anti-vaccination fringe, ever since there was such a thing as vaccination (and no, I ' m not sure why) the Republican party and conservatives have never as a class been hostile to the vaccine mandates that have been in place in every state for decades.Until now.  The ginned up hysteria about Covid-19 vaccine, based on batshit insane conspiracy theories about microchips and alterations to DNA and lizard people, was just one more manufactured outrage to stir up the MAGAts, like Critical Race Theory, the castration of Mr. Potatohead, and of course the Big Steal, better known as the Big...
Source: Stayin' Alive - January 25, 2022 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs

Shingles of the eye can cause lasting vision impairment
Shingles, or herpes zoster, is a viral infection known for its characteristic painful, burning, or itchy rash. This rash appears along a particular affected nerve, for example in a band on one side of the chest or abdomen that extends around to the back. In fact, the name shingles comes from cingulum, the Latin word for girdle, belt, or sash. Shingles is caused by reactivation of the varicella zoster virus, the virus that causes chickenpox. After the initial chickenpox infection resolves the virus lives on in nerves all over the body, but is kept in check by the immune system. The risk of shingles therefore increases with ...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - January 27, 2021 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Miriam Barshak, MD Tags: Eye Health Healthy Aging Vaccines Source Type: blogs

Shingles: What triggers this painful, burning rash?
If you’re like 95% of American adults, you had chickenpox as a kid. Before the United States started its widespread vaccination program in 1995, there were roughly four million cases of chickenpox every year. So, most people suffered through an infection with this highly contagious virus and its itchy, whole-body rash. But unlike many childhood viruses, the varicella-zoster virus that causes chickenpox doesn’t clear from the body when the illness ends. Instead it hangs around, taking up residence and lying dormant in the nerves, sometimes for decades, with the immune system holding it in check. In some people, it lives...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - December 14, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Kelly Bilodeau Tags: Health Healthy Aging Skin and Hair Care Vaccines Source Type: blogs

Nasal Endoscopy for Urgent and Complex ED Cases
​Fiberoptics and endoscopy have changed the way we treat patients in the emergency department. Endoscopes are relatively easy to use, and can aid your diagnosis and treatment plan. Endoscopy may be useful in urgent cases, such as epistaxis, nasal foreign bodies, and ear debridement. It may also be helpful when dealing with more complicated presentations and critically ill patients, such as those with Ludwig's angina, epiglottis, tracheostomies, or those who need intubation.Fiberoptic tools are not just for surgeons and consultants. The endoscope has many uses in the emergency department, and we have a few tips and tricks...
Source: The Procedural Pause - October 28, 2020 Category: Emergency Medicine Tags: Blog Posts Source Type: blogs

Monkeypox
By Dr. Stephen A. Berger   Cynomolgus monkey, a known reservoir of the Monkeypox virus   WHAT IS MONKEYPOX? Monkeypox, as the name implies, is a disease of monkeys (unlike chickenpox – which has no relation to chickens). Although the condition is reported in a group of eleven African countries, the virus was first discovered in a laboratory in Denmark in 1958, when it was first isolated from cynomolgus monkeys. The signs and symptoms are similar to those of smallpox. Following a three-day prodrome of fever, headache, myalgia, and back pain, patients develop a papular rash in the face, extremities, and genitals....
Source: GIDEON blog - October 8, 2020 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: Kristina Symes Tags: Epidemiology News Source Type: blogs

Measles, Chickenpox, and Other Preventable Diseases: Why Stricter Vaccine Exemptions Are a Must-Proposed Legislation For Stricter Vaccine Exemption Standards
Eleanor Sills (Florida State University), Measles, Chickenpox, and Other Preventable Diseases: Why Stricter Vaccine Exemptions Are a Must-Proposed Legislation For Stricter Vaccine Exemption Standards, 47 FL. ST. U. LAW REV. 3 (2020, FORTHCOMING): The outbreak of measles in 2019 was... (Source: HealthLawProf Blog)
Source: HealthLawProf Blog - October 5, 2020 Category: Medical Law Authors: Katharine Van Tassel Source Type: blogs

COVID herd immunity: At hand or forever elusive?
By MICHEL ACCAD, MD With cases of COVID-19 either disappeared or rapidly diminishing from places like Wuhan, Italy, New York, and Sweden, many voices are speculating that herd immunity may have been reached in those areas and that it may be at hand in the remaining parts of the world that are still struggling with the pandemic.  Lockdowns should end—or may not have been needed to begin with, they conclude. Adding plausibility to their speculation is the discovery of biological evidence suggesting that prior exposure to other coronaviruses may confer some degree of immunity against SARS-CoV2, a...
Source: The Health Care Blog - July 30, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Christina Liu Tags: COVID-19 Health Policy immunity MICHEL ACCAD Pandemic Source Type: blogs

Vaccines for COVID-19 moving closer
As the world reels from illnesses and deaths due to COVID-19, the race is on for a safe, effective, long-lasting vaccine to help the body block the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. The three vaccine approaches discussed here are among the first to be tested clinically in the United States. How vaccines induce immunity: The starting line In 1796, in a pastoral corner of England, and during a far more feudal and ethically less enlightened time, Edward Jenner, an English country surgeon, inoculated James Phipps, his gardener’s eight-year-old son, with cowpox pustules obtained from the arm of a milkmaid. It was widely believed ...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - July 21, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Shiv Pillai, PhD, MBBS Tags: Coronavirus and COVID-19 Health Infectious diseases Vaccines Source Type: blogs

Sunday Sermonette: The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Skin Diseases
For those who claim that the Bible is the literal and inerrant word of God, and who claim to live by the Bible, Leviticus 13 and 14 ought to pose a considerable problem. Of course nobody who makes that claim is sincere. They just skip the embarrassing parts. Noah ' s ark is a fun story with animals. You can build a theme park around it. These chapters, however, are just deeply weird.It ' s important to note that " leprosy " here does not mean the disease which has been given that name in modern times, now more properly called Hansen ' s Disease. None of the symptoms described here correspond to those of Hansen ' s disease,...
Source: Stayin' Alive - April 19, 2020 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs